Music Piracy Research Blog

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Sunday, 31 January 2016

Been wanting to wrap this blog up for at least a year now, as I am engaged in a lot of other writing projects. When an article written for The Conversation got more hits in a week than this blog has in over three years, I knew it was time to move on. The blog is no longer fit-for-purpose.

Today, it ends. But it ends with a 'bang'...

The goal of this blog was to discuss research into music piracy, to shed some informed light on things. It was also about empowering readers with the tools and resources to do this themselves, without my input. With that in mind, I have frequently linked readers to publicly accessible resources to facilitate their own research, on their own time.

I have now found other, better resources in which to share my research with the general public - some are online, many are offline.

And so, it is time for me to log out once and for all.

I will however leave this website live for the foreseeable future in the hope that it is useful.

Monday, 30 November 2015

Took me a while in the end to get round to reading this, and here is my summary.

Witt's book provides an in-depth account of the origins of file-sharing (it goes back longer than you might expect) with vivid descriptions of the principals.

I learned a lot, including that the first pirated song was 'Until it Sleeps', by Metallica. I like details like that.

Defining the year 2000 as the 'banner year' in the timeline of digital music piracy (and I agree), the second half of the book picks up in more familiar territory, and it is here where the real arguments are made.

For instance, Witt ponders: "If something was available for free, and could be freely and infinitely reproduced for free, with no degradation in quality, why would anyone pay to own it for a second time, when they already had it, for free?" (p. 125).

Wednesday, 18 November 2015

Stumbled upon this piece from Tech Times recently which explores music streaming services in some detail.

Though it fails to come to any real conclusions, it offers a neat summary of various aspects of subscription services including how it works differently for established and emerging artists - something I have discussed many times on this blog.

Notably, it draws from academic research (albeit fixated on one study).